


When I'm Saved

by davidrossiismydad



Series: Shitty Incidents [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Gay Male Character, Gen, Kidnapping, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:53:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27850334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davidrossiismydad/pseuds/davidrossiismydad
Summary: This story is a loose and dramatised version based on a true event that happened to me. I have changed names and situations for privacy reasons. This will be a Tumblr and Ao3 exclusive fic. I hope you all enjoy laughing at how much of an idiot I am for getting into this situation.Please note that most of this has been dramatised, and is not the truth as to what happened that night. The actual events were not this bad, but I always wondered what if.
Series: Shitty Incidents [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2038754
Kudos: 2





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a loose and dramatised version based on a true event that happened to me. I have changed names and situations for privacy reasons. This will be a Tumblr and Ao3 exclusive fic. I hope you all enjoy laughing at how much of an idiot I am for getting into this situation.
> 
> This story is also formatted on how I think the BAU would solve the case. It may not be factual, I'm not an FBI agent, this didn't actually happen, yell at me later.

“I’d like to thank you all for coming in on such short notice, and I apologise for calling you all in this late.” Section Chief Mateo Cruz greets his tired team after the plane takes off. “You will notice, Dr Lewis is not here, she took a flight out to Peyton, Idaho to be the liasion for the La Byorteaux family. In the meantime, we have Dr Spencer Reid.” 

“What exactly is the situation?” Agent Prentiss asks. 

“Sixteen-year-old Dmitri La Byorteaux was reported missing from Disneyland at midnight, when the park closed. Park security and LAPD are still searching the park just in case he is still there. Dmitri was with his school group, the Peyton Panthers Marching Band and Colour Guard, the LAPD is taking copies of all of their records concerning Dmitri. The band directors are John Tremblay and Mark Wozniak, assistant leaders are Amy Tremblay, Jill Mellencamp, Nicholas Grace, Nicholas Vasquez, Lily Jones, and Arthur Wallace. There are parent chaperones, the one in charge of Dmitri is Ressa Kilburn,” the section chief explains.

“None of them know where he is or can get ahold of him?” Agent Jareau asks.

“No. These girls may know, though.” 

“Adelaide Parker, Tessa Anderson, Emily McClane, Imogen Wilkinson?” 

“His roommates. They were with him for every moment of the trip.” 

“Roommates? Why would they room a boy with four girls? That sounds very strange.” 

“Hello, crimefighters!” Ms Garcia cheerfully greets the team. “I’ve just been through Dmitri’s records that Mrs Mellencamp has provided, it appears that he didn’t have a seat buddy on the bus. He was in the back of the ‘orange’ bus, with Imogen and Emily in front of him, and Dmitri is on three medications, two anti-depressants and a thyroid hormone. He is also reportedly allergic to ibuprofen.” 

“Two anti-depressants?” 

“Yeah, fluoxetine and trazodone.” 

“Those two together can create an effect called serotonin syndrome, which is an excess in the hormone serotonin, which is known as the hormone that makes people happy. Symptoms can range from headaches and myoclonus to hyperthermia and a drastically increased heart rate,” Dr Reid says.

“Dmitri’s phone is most likely dead because I can’t track it.” 

“Does he talk to anybody from the Los Angeles area?” 

“I spotted a few Los Angeles numbers in his contacts. One belongs to a Hussein College. Another is registered to a man named Diego Castro, and yet another is registered to a Jacob Freeman. I’m sending contact information to your mobiles.”

“Castro’s a forty-year-old drag queen. Has the physique to easily overpower Dmitri.”

“Freeman is six feet tall, twenty-one-years-old, also has the physique to overpower Dmitri easily. Do they know each other? Did either of them know Dmitri or each other before yesterday?”

“No. I don’t even think Diego and Jacob know each other now, but I...I just found a picture on Diego’s Instagram, it’s from yesterday, and both Dmitri and Tessa are in it. Diego’s the one hugging Dmitri, the other men are friends of his.” 

“That’s Tessa over there on the other side. And is Dmitri in a wheelchair?”

“Yeah, none of the band records mentioned a wheelchair or a mobility impairment, so let me just get ahold of Dmitri’s medical records…” Typing can be heard through the laptop. “Huh. There’s nothing for Dmitri. At all. Like, he doesn’t exist. I found a Rhys La Byorteaux, though, they have the same prescriptions, same hometown, same last name...same parents…the only thing different is that Rhys is a girl and Dmitri is a boy. They even have the same therapist.”

“Rhys and Dmitri sound like they’re the same person. When did Dmitri start existing?”

“Early in 2017. That’s also when Rhys kind of started...not existing…yeah, they’re the same person, records from Dmitri’s clinic show Rhys is a legal name and that he is biologically female, but he is seeking treatment for gender dysphoria and uses the name, Dmitri. 

“Oh...he’s transgender? Why weren’t we told of that?” Agent Jareau asks. “I feel like that would be important information to know.”

“I don’t know, but we’re still calling him Dmitri, right?”

“We should, to avoid confusion. How common is that last name?”

“Not very, sir, the only other people I’m finding in America with that last name are the acting brothers and Dmitri’s family...there is a birth certificate for a Luke La Byorteaux, born to a Nathaniel La Byorteaux and a Maria Alvez, but I can’t find anything for Luke past 1989.” Agent Alvez looks to the laptop with his eyebrows furrowed.

“Did you just say Maria Alvez?” 

“Yeah, she also kind of went missing, too.” 

“Garcia. Focus on Dmitri.”  
“Got it. Dmitri’s medical records look relatively normal up until the age of three, then after that, it looks like he’s a frequent flyer in the medical field. He was born relatively healthy for being induced three weeks early, except for the part where his father, Nathaniel La Byorteaux, was removed from the delivery room for protesting when the doctor threw the baby at mother Eva Kelly’s chest, and also for refusing doctors access to newborn Dmitri, who was born anaemic.” 

“What kind of father refuses treatment for his newborn child?” Agent Simmons asks. “What started happening when Dmitri turned three?”

“A lot of appointments with speciality doctors, peppered in with ER visits. Dmitri was referred out to an audiologist based on concerns of multiple ear infections and being deaf. They found out he wasn’t deaf by scanning his brain waves when the regular test didn’t work out, and he was developmentally delayed, put in preschool at the age of three, the youngest in his class. He ate a penny, went to the ER to have it pumped out, that’s like the one relatively normal thing that happened to him. Eva Kelly and Nathaniel La Byorteaux voiced numerous concerns about Dmitri’s neverending ear infections and the strep throat that he would get constantly, as well as the frequent nosebleeds that happened nearly daily. He was admitted to the ER numerous times, covered in bruises from head to toe, bleeding profusely, dangerously high fevers, and he was rushed from the hospital in Ontario, Oregon to Boise, Idaho. CPS was called over concerns of Nathaniel abusing Dmitri, but charges were dismissed once Eva explained that Nathaniel wouldn’t actually beat Dmitri if he didn’t wake up, that was just how Nathaniel woke him up.” 

“What? Nathaniel threatened to beat up Dmitri?”

“Yeah, I wish that was a joke. All of the tests came back that there were no platelets in Dmitri’s system. Anywhere. Zilch. He was given three bags of immunoglobulin and carefully monitored after that. Doctors determined that the only explanation could have been this rare disease called ITP, or-”

“Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura. The body mistakenly attacks and destroys platelets in the body, which are fragments of cells that help clot the blood when the body is wounded. It usually starts in children after a viral disease, and it usually resolves itself without any need for treatment.” 

“Yas, Good Doctor. Dmitri’s condition was closely monitored after that, and then shortly after his fifth birthday, he was diagnosed with autism by a specialist in Salt Lake City Utah. He went to the MayoClinic in Phoenix, Arizona for a month to have a splenectomy, and then that August, he and his brother Roger Kelly were nearly killed in a single-car rollover, and more blood bags were needed, both sustained concussions. Dmitri was admitted to the ER again later that month after he reportedly fell from the shelves in his closet during the night, that’s a concussion, and then again after he tipped over one of those old-person motor scooters onto himself, but miraculously, all he had was road rash and a bunch of scratches.” 

“What? Where did he get a motorised scooter?”

“His dad apparently got it after breaking his knee on his stepson, Robert’s trick bike, when he collided with the garden gnome. Robert also split his chin open and had to get five stitches. Again, the garden gnome. No, I’m not making any of this up. Let’s see...no hospital activity until Dmitri got his tonsils removed at age nine, apparently that was the reason he got strep throat five times a year. He went through urgent care all the time for weird accidents, like one time, his face swelled up to the size of a grapefruit due to incorrectly using acne wipes. He went through urgent care at fourteen for a concussion, was sent home, no further testing was done...and then two months later, he was admitted to the ER for a major concussion, tests showed no brain bleeding, he was sent home to recover from it, when to the ER three months ago because he had bled out during a panic attack...He didn’t go to the ER again until three weeks ago, and yeah.”

“How does he behave in school?”

“Uh...Dmitri is mayhem incarnate, constant behaviour issues. He’s noted to be moody, anxious, fidgety, stubborn. Quite closed off from his peers, distracted, impulsive. He does his work super fast, and is noted to be quite intelligent but chooses to break the rules. He is known to be very messy, and he is regularly known to be very goofy, often covered in markers and other things.. He argues with teachers a lot, has his phone confiscated a lot, violates dress code a lot, has been involved in weird incidents, has a very filthy mouth, serves a lot of detention for being late, a lot.” 

“He’s a rule breaker. You think he left on purpose?”

“He doesn’t look like he can in that wheelchair. It looks like a park rental. Garcia, check into that wheelchair thing. And check Dmitri’s social media. His emails and text messages, too.” 

“On it. I’m gonna update Tara," The blonde woman ends the call, and the screen returns to a navy blue background. 

“I’m gonna call LAPD, tell them Dmitri has less time than we thought,” Chief Cruz says, pulling out his cell phone and stepping towards another section of the plane. 

“How do you bleed out from a panic attack?” Agent Rossi asks. “Kid has got talents.”

“That entire family has talents. A garden gnome?”

“Less talk about the freak garden gnome accident, more trying to find Dmitri. He couldn’t have gotten far if he needed a wheelchair, so someone would have had to carry him out if he got far.” 

“We have to figure out why he was in a wheelchair.” 

“He did have a concussion three weeks ago that went mostly untreated, he’s probably still showing symptoms, and he may have developed physical coordination issues rendering him temporarily unable to walk. He may also be extremely dizzy, or his limbs may be extremely weak,” Dr Reid explains. 

“Someone would have had to take him. We should track down Diego Castro and Jacob Freeman, see what they know.” 

“The girls would definitely know what happened to him. We have to talk to them. We should also talk to the chaperones that would know Dmitri the best, starting with John and Amy Tremblay.”


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arriving at the hotel, the agents start to interview the group member to try to piece together what happened to Dmitri La Byorteaux.

“The press looks horrendous,” Agent Jareau says, looking out towards the front of the hotel as the team exits their SUVs. “Ah, Lieutenant Kim.” 

“Agent Jareau. Rossi, Reid, Prentiss. Where are Hotchner and Morgan?”

“They retired. These are Agents Simmons, Alvez, and Section Chief Cruz. We have an Agent in Peyton with Dmitri’s father,” Agent Prentiss answers. “How is the group coping?”

“We should get inside.” The lieutenant says, escorting the team into the hotel’s back entrance. “The hotel has been placed on lockdown, only law enforcement is coming and going. We’ve questioned all of the kids and the chaperones. Some of the kids are devastated, some are pleased that Dmitri is gone. The kids are in their respective rooms, and the chaperones are in the Monterey ballroom. The girls are in Room 407 with the colour guard staff and two chaperones, officers have been stationed outside the room.” 

“Pleased?”

“Dmitri isn’t so well accepted outside of his friends. One of the kids in his grade claims Dmitri broke his nose, and other kids have backed up the story. Dmitri has also been the subject of a few harassment incidents in school. Here is a list of people that know Dmitri the best.” Section Chief Cruz takes the list and scans over it.

“How is Mr and Mrs Tremblay taking this?”

“Mrs Tremblay hasn’t had much of a reaction. Mr Tremblay is angry about everything, but has cooperated. The colour guard staff, Dmitri’s direct coaches, are taking it very hard.” 

“How is the colour guard taking it?”

“Most are sad, confused, angry. Some of them don’t see Dmitri favourably. One is exclusively regarding to Dmitri as Rhys.” 

“One of them was a next-door neighbour?”

“Yes, LeAnne Owens. Dmitri was a friend of hers before they moved away into a neighbourhood that suited their Mormon beliefs more.” 

“Religion? Peyton’s separated by religion?” Agent Prentiss asks. 

“The town is mostly Mormon, a church on nearly every block in the downtown area. Those who aren’t Mormon aren’t treated very well once the others find out, apparently. Dmitri has been shunned for a few years, most kids only interact with him during group projects.” 

“They probably took advantage of him because of his intellect,” Dr Reid comments. “Dmitri’s IQ is apparently one hundred and eighty seven. Autistic individuals tend to be more excluded by their peers and have troubles relating to neurotypical peers. The other kids would likely not understand how he functions and behaves, and he would struggle to maintain friendships. He would likely just think they were being his friends and not be able to see that other people were manipulating him to get what they wanted.” 

“Our command center is in the La Paz ballroom. We have five officers monitoring the tip lines, and the media has been running broadcasts since one am.”

“What have the media been saying?” Agent Jareau asks. 

“We told them that Dmitri disappeared, and that anyone who might have seen what happened to him should call the hotline. We haven’t confirmed or denied that Dmitri was abducted, but it’s starting to look like that’s what happened. Park search came up empty, we issued an Amber Alert for Los Angeles and the neighbouring counties around three am, stressing that Dmitri’s health is fragile. Free coffee in the lobby, but warning, it’s as bad as our station coffee.”

“Matt, Reid, go up to Room 407,” Agent Prentiss says. “Ask very specifically about what happened last night and our unsubs. Ask them if Diego or Jacob could have taken Dmitri. The adults may not know about what happened, so tread carefully. Luke, you and Rossi should go to the Monterey ballroom and talk with the Tremblays, Mrs Mellencamp, Mrs Kilburn, and any other chaperones that interacted with Dmitri yesterday. JJ, Cruz, and I will set up in the command center, touch bases with PG and Tara. We’ll text you any new information that comes in. Mobiles on. Head out.” 

“Sanchez. Escort Agent Simmons and Dr Reid up to Room 407,” Lieutenant Kim says, stopping a passing officer in his tracks. “BAU. They’re going to question the kids.” 

“Of course. There’s only one functioning elevator in this hotel, but staircases in every corner. Come with me.” The buff Asian and the pipe cleaner with eyes break off from the group, heading back towards the nearest staircase.  
“Only one elevator?” Agent Jareau asks as the team follows the lieutenant towards the lobby. 

“Yes, only one. If they couldn’t grab the elevator, the kids would drag their things up the staircases. There wasn’t much comment on Dmitri’s mobility, but Mrs Kilburn did share with us a picture of Dmitri in the Main Street USA parade.” Agent Prentiss squints at the picture and takes a picture of it with her phone. “What is it?”

“Look at the way his left hand grabs the pole vs how the others in the picture are holding the pole, and how his smile droops on the left side of his face.”

“What does that mean?”

“The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, it looks like that’s where he took the most damage. Look at those transition lenses.” Agent Alvez points to the glasses in the picture. “Those would hide a drooping left eye.” 

“This is the Monterey ballroom,” Lieutenant Kim announces, pushing the door to the conference room open. Agents Alvez and Rossi nod and pass through the door, closing it behind them. 

“Excuse me,” Agent Rossi asks, approaching another officer. “We’re with the FBI, and we’re looking for John and Amy Tremblay.” The officer points towards an older, balding man and an older woman with red hair holding his hand at a table. “Thank you.” The Italian Stallion and the buff, steaming mug of hot cocoa then head to the table, Agent Rossi sitting across from the couple. “Mr and Mrs Tremblay, we’re Agents Rossi and Alvez with the FBI. We’re a few of the agents helping to find Dmitri.”

“FBI?” A woman with dark curly hair asks, ending her hushed conversation with a woman with red curly hair.

“Yes, ma’am, FBI. We have a few questions about Dmitri. The more we can understand about his behaviour, the more we can figure out what happened to him and how to help him. Who might you be, ma’am?” 

“I’m Jill Mellencamp. I assist with band finances and keep all the records. This is Connie Hiratsu, she’s one of the chaperones.”

“When did you last see Dmitri?”

“Nine pm. He was with his friends, leaving Splash Mountain,” Mr Tremblay answers. 

“What was he wearing?”

“Our grey shirts we gave the kids, rainbow shoes. A rainbow bowtie, rainbow ears.”

“Interesting attire. Do you know of anybody Dmitri would know here in Los Angeles? Did he tell you he was meeting up with anybody?”

“No,” Mr Tremblay answers, his piecing blue eyes beaming through the agent in front of him.

“Has he ever been caught speaking to strangers?”

“This one time, last year, I had found him after our halftime performance, and a tall man was holding him while he was crying. I separated them and had our drum major and seniors watch over Dmitri. He did not tell me why he was upset or who the man was.”

“He knows better than to talk to strangers. He’s in high school, he knows the rules,” Connie argues. 

“Connie. He’s hurting right now. Arguing about it isn’t going to help him.” 

“Are you guys going to tell them how much trouble he is?” She retorts. 

“Connie-”

“He threw a water bottle, had a tantrum, and screamed at me, like he was a toddler. Was I supposed to just let him represent our school and organisation poorly? Other people might think we’re snobs if they saw that-”

“Mrs Hiratsu. What exactly was happening?” 

“He was upset, and he threw a water bottle at the ground, and I told him that high schoolers don’t throw things, and he wouldn’t calm down or tell me what was going on. He was throwing a tantrum-”

“Connie. Loud noises and crowds stress Dmitri out. He was freaking out because he didn’t have his ticket into the park and he couldn’t find Ressa Kilburn, so I had him go through the security checkpoint with me and my family, and afterwards, he ran away, but he came back to the group after a few minutes. Mrs Anderson told us she went to talk to him.”

“He aimed it at the ground or at someone?” Agent Alvez asks. 

“At the ground, but it shouldn’t matter. He was acting out of line.” 

“Mrs Hiratsu, Dmitri has autism, and he gets overwhelmed and shuts down. Now when he shuts down, he might be aggressive or defensive, throwing things or screaming,” Agent Alvez replies. “Him aiming the bottle at the ground is better than if he aimed it at a person. It means that he is semi-aware of his surroundings in his state, and he is empathetic and doesn’t want to disrupt things.”

“Then why would he do that?”

“He doesn’t want to do it, but he just does. He probably feels embarrassed that he reacts like that.” 

“He is rather empathetic. If you raise your voice at him, he’ll think you’re mad at him, and then it takes forever for him to get that you’re not mad at him. He always thinks Jill and I are mad at him.” 

“How is he, socially? Does he get along well with the other kids?”

“No, he’s always closed off from the others. Most people don’t even realise he’s there.”

“If he had his way, he’d be in the corner with his music and his notebook,” Mrs Tremblay adds.

“We try to get him to participate with others, but he always just does his own thing. Jill, you’re also involved with the musical theatre program, and you interact with Dmitri there.” 

“Yes, I do, but he’s practically the same way. He gets really embarrassed to have to talk in front of other kids, just almost shuts down, he starts stammering and stuttering and panicking.” 

“He wouldn’t tell anyone if there was something wrong.” 

“Exactly. Nick, Lily, and Arthur have better luck getting him out of his shell, but he still doesn’t ask for help unless you start the conversation. I can see it when it’s just the guard, but I don’t know how to explain it. He laughs more, smiles more with them. Nick and Lily tell me that he actually reaches out to the new guard kids, which is unheard of.” 

“Could any of you tell us how Dmitri changed after his last concussion, three weeks ago?” Agent Alvez asks. 

“He smiles more, laughs more, asks more questions. He’s definitely more outspoken, but he falls asleep everywhere. I don’t know how he falls asleep on the school bus seats, but he does.”

“I caught him sleeping in the doorway one morning during musical theatre class. He’ll just take little naps during class. He seems to be a lot dizzier, falls a lot more.” 

“Yes. He falls when he laughs, and since he laughs at everything now, he always falls. He’s been walking around with hoods up, headphones on, using the walls as supports.” 

“Do his eyes glaze over? Does he eat enough to compensate for the high activity levels? We noticed he’s smaller than most.” 

“The nosebleed. Do you think that was anything serious?” 

“He acted like it was,” Connie asks. 

“A nosebleed?”

“He bled out all over the boys’ bathroom once, and it took half an hour to get him to stop bleeding. He was accepting the sugar we provided him, but he freaked out once we mentioned afrin, wouldn’t let us give it to him, he thought we were going to give him aspirin. He couldn’t figure out what was happening to him, and he was texting his grandparents.” 

“Okay, okay.” The four adults fall silent, appearing to hold a lifetime back. “Thank you. We’ll come back if we have any more questions.”


	3. Part 3

The chief of police puts the cruiser into park, high pitched barks get closer to the car. “That’s the family dog. Oscar is just a puppy, he’s like five months old, I believe.” Dr Lewis looks out the window to see a gruff man with grey hair making his way towards the cruiser, the frame muffling his yelling. “Roll down the window,” he says. 

“What?”

“That’s Nate.” She rolls down the window, and the man picks up a black puppy. “Nate. This is Dr Tara Lewis from the FBI-”

“FBI?” He asks. 

“Hi, Nate. We’re doing everything we can to find Dmitri,” Dr Lewis explains calmly. “Cute puppy.”

“Rhys picked him out. Wanted a new animal after her cat died a few years back.” Dr Lewis turns to her escort. “Do you have to keep sending people to dig through my house? My damn daughter isn’t in my house.” 

“DJ. You know anything about the state troopers that showed up?” Another man asks, approaching the car. 

“What? That doesn’t make sense, that kid is not part of their investigation.” 

“What investigation?” 

“Not at liberty to tell you, Nate.” The officer sighs and exits the cruiser. Dr Lewis follows, climbing out and closing the door behind her. “Just tell me what they’ve done so far.” 

“They’re requesting the notebooks and the computer. I told them that unless they could prove that Rhys is a part of their investigation, they couldn’t have it. They have seemed to jump to the conclusion that Rhys’s disappearance is connected to their investigation, but they won’t tell us how.” 

“Jeremy, go brief your people on the situation and come back here. Do they know that FBI has jurisdiction now?” 

“I’ve been out here with Nate, apparently Roger and Robert Kelly are on their way over. Have your people been briefed?”

“Not yet. I had been at the station a few minutes to greet Dr Lewis. FBI drove her over from Boise,” the chief answers. “Once you get back, I’ll go brief my people.” The two men nod at each other before one loads into the county cruiser and pulls away. “That was County Sheriff Jeremy Howard, my older brother. Nate, why don’t you go settle in your office? We’ll come to get you if we need you.” The chief suggests as the group heads up to the house. Once they enter the yellow house with red poles in front, the gruff man sets the puppy on the floor. 

“Rhys’s bedroom is the first door on the right,” he roughly explains. “She lives in there. It’s a disaster.” The man sighs. “She can’t clean it up for anything. There’s probably a rat hiding in there somewhere. Be careful if you go in there, you might trip on something and break an ankle.” A state trooper exits the bedroom, lighting a patch of the brown hallway with a yellow-tinted light. 

“I’m told there’s an issue?” He asks. 

“Chief Howard, Peyton PD. I didn’t think this was a part of your investigation, Captain,” the man retorts. 

“We just happened to hear about the kid...how do you pronounce the name? R-is?” 

“Rees,” the gruff man cuts in.

“Like the candy? Oh, that’s cute, Nate.” 

“Captain. This is Dr Lewis from the FBI, she is liaising on behalf of the rest of the FBI, who are in Los Angeles finding Rhys.” 

“Mr La Byorteaux, if you will excuse us,” Dr Lewis addresses the scruffy man with grey hair, wearing a black USPS beanie. She leads the chief and the captain into the bedroom and closes the door behind her.

“Look, we were investigating on behalf of you guys.” 

“Thank you, but we like to process the crime scenes and go through the evidence ourselves. First things first, the BAU is officially addressing Rhys as Dmitri. It would be in his best wishes to do so, and it would help us find him quicker if the public knew to look for Dmitri La Byorteaux, a boy, not Rhys La Byorteaux, a girl. Now, have you contaminated the scene?”

“Doctor, we would like to search through the kid’s computer and notebooks, it may give us insight into our investigation.” 

“Let’s worry about finding Dmitri first, then we’ll deal with what he has to do with your investigation,” the doctor warns. “I want the notebooks and the computer first. Those may be instrumental in finding him alive. The first twenty-four hours of an abduction case are crucial, and we’re down to seventeen.” 

“Abduction?” 

“My team has come to the conclusion that Dmitri was abducted. We need to determine if he could have known his abductors by going through his social media. He talks with a lot of strangers over the internet on multiple platforms, and these conversations have probably lasted for years. Dmitri would have been more open on the internet than in real life, he’s probably shared more information with people online than he does trusted adults or friends. Now, you won’t be going through all of that, we have technical analysts working on that front. How many notebooks are there?”

“Over ten. Looks like they took a beating.” The trooper lightly tosses one to the doctor. “I can’t read them…” She gently opens the book, finding proverbial hills and valleys scrawled across the curling pages.

“His handwriting is interesting. I’d like to show this to my team. Do you know how to get into his computer?”

“There’s no password on it, so we were able to get into it.” Doctor Lewis steps over clothes on the floor and makes it to the bed, opening the laptop and firing it up. She whips out her phone and dials out. 

“Hello, my sweet! How may I help you?”

“Did you just get the IP address I sent you?”

“Yeah, I did, it looks like it’s Dmitri’s computer...it seems that this computer has been used to pirate a lot of music, there are a few games installed, and I can tell you, he’s been to the park before. It appears he went when he was eleven with his grandparents.”

“Where did you get that?”

“In his picture gallery. There are more pictures from other trips he has taken, and facial recognition says they are people he knows through his mom’s work as a union official for the National Rural Letter Carrier’s Association. I’m getting into his email, which connects me to everything else of his. The password to his email is the typical spelling of his legal name, R-E-E-S-E, and the numbers nine-one-one. He has an obsession with that number...the email is listed as a recovery address for nine other email addresses. Why would he need that much secrecy?” Dr Lewis looks around the yellow-tinted room with pale blue walls peeking out from behind miles of posters. 

“Garcia, what’s this Opera?”

“What? You’ve heard of Opera?”

“Opera is a web browser in Norway that runs on a Chromium engine, making it compatible with Google Chrome. It was first used in 1995, making it one of the oldest. It also provides a free VPN, and that’s probably why Dmitri uses it, since he already has Google Chrome, and it doesn’t seem like he spends money very often on the internet.”

“Is that Kevin?”

“Yeah, it is,” the man sighs. 

“Why would a sixteen-year-old boy need a VPN?” 

“I don’t know, but we can keep looking. I’m trying the Find My iPhone feature again from his dad’s account, with no luck on either his phone or his iPod. His iPad is pinging from the hotel in Los Angeles where the group was staying.” 

“Has he logged onto social media yet?”

“Nope, no activity since Friday night. His internet friends are spreading all media coverage across social media. An internet friend picked up the news from San Francisco and posted it to Tumblr, and it’s slowly spreading amongst blogs he’s interacted with. The 5SOS fandom is one of the most active fandoms out there right now, and if one of the bigger blogs spreads it, then it could really spread like wildfire. The news has also reached Twitter, and it’s gaining traction. People are tagging members of the bands he listens to.” 

“I’ll let JJ know, and I’ll-” Dr Lewis is cut off by high pitched parks through the walls and yelling. 

“SHUT THE FUCK UP! GODDAMN IDIOT- WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! WHY ARE THEY OUT HERE?!” 

“It’s LUWC. State news,” the captain responds, peeking out of the window. “Who wants to go out there?”


End file.
